Thursday, May 30, 2013

"The Best Science Book Ever Written"

Some economist named George Gilder has read Darwin's Doubt, the latest IDiot book. Gilder says ...

I spend my life reading science books. I've read many hundreds of them over the years, and in my judgment Darwin's Doubt is the best science book ever written. It is a magnificent work, a true masterpiece that will be read for hundreds of years.

UPDATE:George Gilder is one of the co-founders of the Discovery Institute and the author of the book (Stephen Meyer) works for the Discovery Institute. Just saying .. I'm sure the relationship has no bearing on Gilder's review and I'm sure it's completely above board for someone like George Gilder to be quoted in a blurb on the cover. If there was anything wrong then surely David Klinghoffer would have mentioned it in his blog post. (This is one of those cases where "IDiots" might be too kind.)

Gilder is the co-founder of the Discovery Institute; according to wikipedia, his college roommate was Bruce Chapman, the current president of the Discotute.

He is to my knowledge in no way a professional economist, and has no higher degree in that or any other field. The rest can be seen on the wikipedia page. I recommend perusing his thoroughly classy views on women and feminism.

It is the, only the most extraordinarily self-centered species, could imagine that all this was going on for our sake, that’s why I don’t like people saying that their religious faith is modest or humble. It’s the reverse, it’s unbelievably soliphistic and that’s why you get people apparently abject, much too abject for my taste like Mother Teresa. Oh, I’m so humbled I can hardly bother to feed myself, but out of my way because I’m on a mission from God. No, this is arrogance, as a matter of fact, and it claims to know what it cannot know.

ah yes, Hitchens. Such an expert on humility. Wrote the book on it. Lived it every second of his life and knows it backwards and forwards. Modest enough to decide for others whether they are truly modest or only phony modest.

Such a humble man. When he speaks about humility, the room must grow silent.

it certainly DOES have a bearing if said matter of humility claims being 'false' is merely subjective. If someone does not himself practice humility, or have much acquaintance with it, why should his subjective judgement of another's humility/false humility be considered a reliable barometer?

So, by your reasoning, if someone claims to be 7 feet tall, but is only 5' 6", I can't point out that they are lying about their height, unless I am myself 7 feet tall. Good reasoning there, andyboerger.

And, yes, I know you said you are talking about "subjective" traits, but that doesn't matter. One does not have to possess a quality themselves, whether subjective or objective, in order to judge it in the people and things that surrounds one. If I think some food tastes too salty, that is a subjective judgement. And I don't have to be a salty piece of food myself to make it. Or maybe you think I do?

The blurb hooked me into pre-ordering the book. Then I found out Gilder was co-founder of the DI. Doh! But since I'm an Idiot anyway, I might as well read the book. Hey, even broken clocks are right twice a day. Who knows? Maybe it is the best science book ever written. I'll let you know what I think after I read it. I'm sure you'll all be breathlessly waiting for my opinion.

"The blurb hooked me into pre-ordering the book. Then I found out Gilder was co-founder of the DI. Doh!"

Hopefully that will teach you to never pay attention to blurbs. And that's true for ANY book, no matter how much you respect the "author" of the blurb itself. That's just crap publishers put there and that "blurbers" get paid to do or make simply out of courtesy. If the blurbs had any meaning we would need a thousand Nobel prizes per month to cover all those "masterworks".

"isn't it always the name caller that has the weak argument?"Nope. Case in point: calling ID proponents IDiots. Among the relevant experts, there's an overwhelming consensus that ID is nonsense. So calling them IDiots correlates with the strength of the arguments against ID rather than the opposite.

Heh, if only the IDiots could tell us something tangible about their design idea beyond "it was designed". Nothing about how, why, where and when. Just... design. All their arguments for design(unspecified, mysterious, must-not-anthropomorphize design) take the form of "evolution or science in general has yet to explain phenomenon X", so therefore: Design. (By unknowable process with ineffable goal).

Well, if that's true, religious people have a really weak argument since they have been calling non-religious people and people of other religions derogatory names/labels since the beginnings of their religions, such as sinner, blasphemer, devilish, satan worshiper, evil, demonic, liar, perverted, heathen, idolater, hater, infidel, barbarian, heretic, pagan, sub-human, and long list of other derogatory names/labels.

Steve says: "isn't it always the name caller that has the weak argument?"

Then the Bible is based on a very weak argument. Indeed, Christian apologetics nowadays is just a long string of ad hominem attacks. See: William Lane Craig.

[Psalm 14:1]: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.”

[Psalm 53:1]: The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.

[Proverbs 1:7]: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

[Proverbs 18:2]: Fools find no pleasure in understanding, but delight in airing their own opinions.

[2 Peter 3:3-6]: 3 knowing this first: that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts 4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” 5 For of this they are willfully ignorant: that by the Word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, 6 whereby the world as it then was, being overflowed with water, perished.

Notice that the verse above, 2 Peter 3, is FALSIFIED by AIG's Creation Museum in Kentucky, which alters the text to make it focused on the ad hominem attack ("WILLFULLY IGNORANT" they print in large orange letters) and to remove some text, such as the bit about scoffers asking why didn't Jesus return within a generation as he had promised to-- AIG alters the text to make it appear to be focused on Noah's Flood.

I've been monitoring ID for several years, and this is the greatest amount of hype I've ever seen for any ID release. We know it's not because of the stated reason — if they had any solid arguments to buttress design, they'd get them published in the peer-reviewed lit because they crave that more than their collective next breath — so it has to be for another reason, and my hypothesis is that they know ID is dying. They felt triumphalist in the 1990s (Dembski has a good one in Mere Creation about ID getting NSF grants within five years [of 1998]), then they started feeling the resistance and finally lost big in 2005. Post-Dover none of their books have caught the public imagination because their supporters figured that if they couldn't sneak in creationism under the guise of intelligent design, then they might as well return to being open creationists once again. They're trying hard to keep up the illusion of relevance, but it's not difficult to see the writing on the wall.

I also would like to know why you disagree with Shapiro and Dennis Noble, you are fully entitled to disagree of course but based on what grounds? The evidence? If you have the evidence that refutes them present it for scrutiny.

Lastly this is how it goes in any discussion about evolutionary biology. When anybody is sceptical about the current theory and a question is asked the first response is always, "You don't understand!" When you ask for information to understand the second response is always "You're too stupid to understand." Why is that?

Here is the issue with NS & RM; these mechanisms can only work if the information was pre-loaded, Neither NS nor RM can create information de novo, and it can only work with what it has. Where did the information come from? If you can show me how these mechanisms can create information from nothing I will concede and you can call me an idiot!

Natural selection and drift fixes information from/about the environment (it is very hot here) and constructs sequence information through mutations in strings of DNA sequence (protein needs more codons for disulfide bridges). In this way, we can even get information about past environments from reconstructed ancient proteins. Reconstructed proteins from the last universal common ancestor (at approximately 3.5 billion years ago) have been determined to function optimally at over 70 degrees celcius, by which we can infer that it was probably living at a hydrothermal vent or volcanic hotspring of some sort.

That's where the information comes from. It is an intrinsic property of any concievable physical environment(temperature, pressure, humidity, foodsources, predators etc.), and selection and drift simply fixes mutations (sequence information) that do well in these environments into the genomes of self-reproducing organisms over generations.

Simple, really. Nothing mysterious or inexplicable about "information" in living organisms.

I'm convinced but not sure I'm convicted that you are not stupid. For Natural Selection and random mutation to be able to kick in and work it needs preloaded information. Natural selection and random mutation can and will only work if it has a template to work from, it can not create a de novo template. Your answer does not address the question try again. Molecules randomly crashing into each other might create some information but it can not and will not create anything workable, to think it does is a metaphysical claim because in our best observation no natural process has been capable of doing that.

Rumraket writes, 'Simple, really. Nothing mysterious or inexplicable about "information" in living organisms.'

If the emergence of consciousness, and the development of organisms as large and complex as dinosaurs (capable of sustaining their life force within such massive frames by converting plant life into nourishment) arising from gradual variations on a 'replicator' so small it is invisible to the human eye (by a long shot), are such 'simple' and ho hum developments in this universe, then one wonders how they haven't come, somehow, to develop in other forms of matter? Why no intelligent stars? You'd think that these simple, ho hum mechanisms, with trillions of stars to work with and billions of years to play out in, would have produced a conscious star, asteroid, or something by now. No, Rumraket, life, consciousness, etc.; these are not 'simple, really'.

@AndreFor Natural Selection and random mutation to be able to kick in and work it needs preloaded information.I already told you where this information exists. All physical environments intrinsically possess information, your question really only boils down to how this gets transferred into living organisms, and I already told you how this happens.

Natural selection and random mutation can and will only work if it has a template to work from, it can not create a de novo template.In other words, how does the process of evolution even start? That's a question about the origin of life, not about the ability of evolution to shape life (and it's "information").

Your answer does not address the question try again. Molecules randomly crashing into each other might create some informationThank you for this concession, it means your entire argument is self-refuting bunk.

but it can not and will not create anything workable, to think it does is a metaphysical claim because in our best observation no natural process has been capable of doing that.I wanted to call this a blind assertion, but given that you've already been told why it's false, your response more accurately amounts to denial.

Andre, all Rumraket really has is the position that, if it didn't happen here, and in this way, then we wouldn't be here to argue about it. And when one is determined to hold to a materialistic and unconscious explanation for the origin of the universe, life, and consciousness, that is all one needs.

I think there might really only be two arguments.The 'atheist's'; Consciousness is so complex that it can only have arrived at the end of a natural series of events.The 'theist's'; The universe, life, and consciousness are so complex that they can only be conceived as having come about through some form of awareness that is beyond our understanding, and may very probably ALWAYS be beyond our understanding.

I consider both positions more or less equal. I would never call a person stupid for holding to either one.

If the emergence of consciousness, and the development of organisms as large and complex as dinosaurs (capable of sustaining their life force within such massive frames by converting plant life into nourishment) arising from gradual variations on a 'replicator' so small it is invisible to the human eye (by a long shot), are such 'simple' and ho hum developments in this universe, then one wonders how they haven't come, somehow, to develop in other forms of matter? You mistook an explanation for the origin of information in biological systems with an attempt to explain everything you find incomprehensible about life. No amount of bafflement on your part with regards to the "life-force" of dinosaurs changes the simplicity of the explanation. The answer is evolution.

Why no intelligent stars? You'd think that these simple, ho hum mechanisms, with trillions of stars to work with and billions of years to play out in, would have produced a conscious star, asteroid, or something by now. They did, you. You're made of starstuff. What you're baffled hasn't yet happened, did. You seem to think "being alive" is somehow a special property in need of any more of an explanation than planets or stars themselves are. The Mt. Everest exists nowhere else in the universe, there is no other structure like it. Yet in broad terms, the explanation for it's origin is still quite simple(plate tectonics), despite it being colossal, unfathomably improbable and thus totally unique.

No, Rumraket, life, consciousness, etc.; these are not 'simple, really'.But the process by which information is transferred from physical environments into living organisms, is.

@AndyboergerAndre, all Rumraket really has is the position that, if it didn't happen here, and in this way, then we wouldn't be here to argue about it. I don't hold such a position.

And when one is determined to hold to a materialistic and unconscious explanation for the origin of the universe, life, and consciousness, that is all one needs.Actually my determination is focused on believing only that for which there exists sufficient evidential justification while also dispensing with single-word non-explanations(goddidit/miracle/magic/divine will).

In contrast to these infinitely ad-hoc, unfalsifiable, non-predictive, non-explanations, evolution actually consists of (an observed) and testable mechanism making specific predictions that anyone can understand.

I think there might really only be two arguments.The 'atheist's'; Consciousness is so complex that it can only have arrived at the end of a natural series of events.I've never met anyone who argues or thinks like this. You should dispense with these strawmen, or directly quote (And then proceed to argue with) the people who do.

The 'theist's'; The universe, life, and consciousness are so complex that they can only be conceived as having come about through some form of awareness that is beyond our understanding, and may very probably ALWAYS be beyond our understanding.

I consider both positions more or less equal.I consider the first nonexistant and the second "intellectual and scientific defeatism".

I would never call a person stupid for holding to either one.If one entertains either in the face of demonstrable empirical fact, I would.

Rumraket writes,'The 'atheist's'; Consciousness is so complex that it can only have arrived at the end of a natural series of events.I've never met anyone who argues or thinks like this. You should dispense with these strawmen, or directly quote (And then proceed to argue with) the people who do. '

This, in a nutshell, is Richard Dawkins' position, and why he resorts to his 'who designed the designer?' argument against the existence of god.

inputs, outputs, encoders, decoders error correction, integrity checks, a medium and worse the precise sequence of these impact if the information is even usable. It still does not say where the information comes from BTW.

Well ok if its really simple and you're happy with that answer good luck to you, I have nothing to add to the conversation.

Rumraket, your 'sufficient evidential justification' can more simply be referred to as forensics, and my 'bafflement' can more accurately be referred to as the common sensical ability that humans possess to distinguish between that which is probably and that which is highly improbable.

@andyboergerThis, in a nutshell, is Richard Dawkins' position, and why he resorts to his 'who designed the designer?' argument against the existence of god.

Sorry, but I think you're misrepresenting Dawkins' argument. His argument is, rather, that complex things don't emerge fully formed but, instead, arise thru a process starting from simpler things. The idea of "a natural series of events" does not enter into it.

And the standard theist response to this argument basically concedes that it is correct, and then goes on to claim "So God is actually maximally simple." Which just shows how theology can be indistinguishable from comedy.

The term "natural", for one. Also, your original (in every sense of the word) argument does not mention the idea of complexity arising from simplicity. Dawkins' argument is basically an extension of the theistic claim that consciousness (or whatever) is so complex it had to be designed. So if "complexity -> design" is the claim, then "Who designed the designer?" is an obvious question that arises. And "The designer is maximally simple, so he doesn't need to be designed" is an uproariously hilarious response.

@AndyboergerAndyboerger: 'The 'atheist's'; Consciousness is so complex that it can only have arrived at the end of a natural series of events.Rumraket: I've never met anyone who argues or thinks like this. You should dispense with these strawmen, or directly quote (And then proceed to argue with) the people who do.Andyboerger: This, in a nutshell, is Richard Dawkins' position, and why he resorts to his 'who designed the designer?' argument against the existence of god.No, that's not actually his position. He makes that response specifically as a counter to the IDcreationist idea that intelligence requires complexity, and complexity requires design. So he simply turns that right back against creationists and asks them if complex designers are required to explain complexity, they've erected an infinite regress of complex designers. So they either have to engage in logically fallacious special pleading or concede there's a much simpler solution: That complexity doesn't require complex designers to intelligently design it.

inputs, outputs, encoders, decoders error correction, integrity checks, a medium and worse the precise sequence of these impact if the information is even usable. It still does not say where the information comes from BTW.And here we go with the technobabbling terms you don't even understand and you're simply blindly regurgitating because you in a vague way you can't explain associate them with "technology", "computers" and "design by some kind of intelligent engineer".

Actually, there doesn't need to be any of these for information to flow between two entities.

Structural information is transferred from every layer of atoms during crystal growth. Crystals have none of the mentioned "technological" entities. Furthermore, some crystals(like snowflakes) have as properties of their structure, information about the environment in which they formed. The temperature and humidity determines which of many known water crystal structures water molecules will crystallize into. In this way, the layers of water molecules in the ice crystal is structurally determined by the previous one(overall shape as well as defects(mutations) gets copied from one layer to the next), and we can even infer physical properties of the atmosphere in which they formed when we see their pattern. This means environmental information is encoded in snowflake structures(snowflake structures are patterns that function as symbols). This makes snowflakes an example of a naturally occuring code for which we can directly observe it's natural, non-design origin.

Well ok if its really simple and you're happy with that answer good luck to you, I have nothing to add to the conversation.I know Andre, I know.

@AndyboergerRumraket, your 'sufficient evidential justification' can more simply be referred to as forensics, and my 'bafflement' can more accurately be referred to as the common sensical ability that humans possess to distinguish between that which is probably and that which is highly improbable.After the fact everything is incalculably improbable. What are the odds of Mt. Everest, given scattered supernova remnants coalescing under gravity for 5 billion years? Was Mt. Everest now intelligently designed? How about any specific entire planet? Venus, what are the odds of the entire planet of Venus, exactly the way it is? How about the sun, exactly the way it is the instant you finish reading this sentence? The Andromeda galaxy? Any specific macroscopic object within 10 meters of where you sit. Go back 10 billion years and try to calculate the odds.

"This, in a nutshell, is Richard Dawkins' position, and why he resorts to his 'who designed the designer?' argument against the existence of god."

Hmm, you said "atheist's" but then tried to use your strawman of what Dawkins meant to support your erroneous claim. Listen to this very carefully, andy: While some people may idolize Dawkins, what he says or thinks (even if you were to interpret it correctly) isn't necessarily what other atheists think.

Hi Andre,Your ID friendly reference states: "The signal displays readily recognizable hallmarks of artificiality, among which are the symbol of zero..." Since you do understand the significance of this, perhaps you can explain what the symbol for zero is in DNA. I mean besides assigning human contrived vales to nucleotides. Thanks.

Andre, do me this favor. Just a tiiiiny wee bit favor to shut me up. Go into that paper you linked and find me one single specific function discovered by ENCODE. One single new function. Find me a piece of DNA and then show me what function the ENCODE project discovered.

Well, it has to be considered against its competition, such as Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, or Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Well, there's just no comparison.

I've just finished reading Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger, english translation by Stillmam Drake, a U of T scholar) and in 2 pages he outlines his complete experimental protocol with instructions on how to build a telescope, how to calibrate it and how to measure angular distances while observing.

It is a marvel of simplicity and brevity and really demonstrates why he more than any other single person is the "father" of the scientific method.

////inputs, outputs, encoders, decoders error correction, integrity checks, a medium and worse the precise sequence of these impact if the information is even usable. It still does not say where the information comes from BTW. ////

.What you're calling "information flow" is essentially a series of chemical reactions. IDiots often liken genetic information to computer software etc and claim that if the latter is designed, the former must also be designed.

Computer software or human language are not chemicals interacting with each other and the environment, but genes are! Chemical reactions can and do occur spontaneously under given environmental conditions. The chemistry on the early earth and solar system had the necessary raw materials to produce biological macro molecules.

Remember that life didn't originate overnight, it took about a billion years (yes, that's 1000 million years) after the earth formed for the first living cells to appear. That's a staggering amount of time for chemistry to produce workable biomolecules. This doesn't require magic.This only requires you to accept the most obvious explanation.

You only need to think a little to deem supernatural intervention unlikely: Why did the all-powerful designer take billions and billions of years to design living things? And why did he resort to natural chemistry, why not use something artificial such as man-made software for encoding genetic information?

Wow a billion years and lots of chance... Lets see time does zip. it is just a period from then til now. Chance does zip that is just a mathematical term. Lastly your entire argument is metaphysical. What you say has not been observed, can not be tested and can not be repeated. You get 3out of 5 for effort but unfortunately 0 for any empirical evidence. Nice try but not good enough, if chance and time and random collision do it for you, I'm happy for you.

Andre, why do you keep posting links you don't understand the contents of?

Why do you even come here? You're so obviously and manifestly both clueless and a moron, it's apparent even to the people who otherwise are theologically and ideologically motivated to agree with you. You're an embarassment to your "cause". You just post links, you don't understand what they say or the arguments leveled against them.

That means there can't be any better evidence that the main reason for your position is blind, emotionally motivated faith. That's why you just blindly believe what it says in the links you post. They have pretty pictures(and a lot of nonsensical technobabble) and someone somewhere told you that they say what you want them to say, so you come here and blindly regurgitate this nonsensical shit, utterly clueless about the contents, you just blindly believe it.

The you don't understand, response then the you are stupid response, standard materialist fair, for once address the argument. Can you do that? I wager you can not, attacking the man is far easier than his argument.

"You only need to think a little to deem supernatural intervention unlikely: Why did the all-powerful designer take billions and billions of years to design living things? And why did he resort to natural chemistry, why not use something artificial such as man-made software for encoding genetic information?"

Well, IDiot-creationists prefer to blindly believe in ridiculous, impossible, religious fairy tales, rather than "think", and at least some IDCs, if not all, do believe and assert that 'God' did use artificial, 'God-made', front-loaded software for encoding genetic information, which means that they don't believe that millions or billions of years were involved.

"time does zip"? Wrong. We know from experiments such as those of Lenski ( http://special.news.msu.edu/darwin/lenski.php ) that significant evolution with increase of information can happen in 40,000 generations of bacteria. By analogy we expect that significant evolution can happen in 40,000 generations of other organisms. For mammals, with generation times of years, we haven't had time to observe this directly. But if the world is billions of years old, that amount of time is enough for many thousands of significant evolutionary steps.

That greatly understates the case. We have seen significant evolutionary change in far fewer than 40,000 generations. But I like the Lenski experiments because everything was tightly controlled and observed.

You see they increase in fitness for one type of pressure, but then become defenseless against another pressure because they shed those genes for the short term fitness increase. Short term selected fitness gain, long term overall fitness loss.

The paper you linked to is by Koskiniemi S, Sun S, Berg OG, and Andersson DI of Uppsala University in Sweden.

Richard Lenski spells his name differently and he is located at Michigan State in the USA. The authors of the paper you refer to use the bacterium Salmonella enterica while Lenski's long-term evolution experiment is with Escherichia coli.

Except for those minor details, your statement is as accurate as most statements from IDiots.

Andre, good sir, you are want-wit and a blithering toff. Your level evidentiary support is as poor as your grammar, sir. Had you taken the time to actually read the abstract of the publication you referenced, you would see it provides no support for your outlandish and ungrammatical assertion that Lenski's bacteria is [sic] not doing so well.

[Note that my change in style is due to Larry's insistence that my language no longer be profligate in its use of the Anglo-Saxon verb that refers to forcing unnatural carnal knowledge.]

And they are still just bacteria.....

And you, good sir, are still an ape as you are a descendant of apes: genetically, anatomically and educationally you are member of the quadrumana, and if anything, you have steeply degenerated from the last common ancestor of Pan troglodytes and Homo sapiens.

In a nice research article in the journal Science this week researchers discuss how complexity can arise from simplicity.

A teaser: In a solution containing both sodium silicate and barium chloride, the growth of barium carbonate and silicate will depend on, as well as influence, the pH of the solution. The formation of these crystals is thus strongly coupled, resulting in the growth of complex shapes—tuliplike in the example shown.

A tulip teaser demonstrating, once again, that research trumps IDiocy every time.

George Gilder ran an investment newsletter that had a slight hiccup. As he told the Wall Street Journal:

"The trouble with my business is that everyone came in at the peak," Mr. Gilder said in a recent interview. "The typical Gilder subscriber lost all his money and that made it very hard for me to market the newsletter."

"George Gilder ran an investment newsletter that had a slight hiccup. As he told the Wall Street Journal:

"The trouble with my business is that everyone came in at the peak," Mr. Gilder said in a recent interview. "The typical Gilder subscriber lost all his money and that made it very hard for me to market the newsletter."

///What you say has not been observed, can not be tested and can not be repeated. You get 3out of 5 for effort but unfortunately 0 for any empirical evidence. Nice try but not good enough, if chance and time and random collision do it for you, I'm happy for you.///.

There's much more evidence for this than your "magic wand hypothesis". We may never figure out the exact sequence of events that resulted in the first living cells since chemistry is firmly dependent on the environment. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to figure out how exactly the environment changed and how it affected chemistry during the first billion years of earth's history. And remember, microenvironments in small ponds or undersea volcanic vents would have been even more different than the global environment.

However, there's no reason to invoke God here. Chemistry and biochemistry are well known and well studied natural phenomena - chemical reactions can occur and propagate by themselves, they don't need to be "operated" by fictitious supernatural beings. The raw materials required for life, namely organic molecules, have been detected even on comets and interstellar material.

People like Stanley Miller have shown that these simple precursors can form biomolecules spontaneously under given conditions. Sydney Fox produced "proteinoids" and cell-like spheres called "protobionts" starting with amino acids and volcanic ash. These protobionts were even capable of division by budding. Recently, it was demonstrated that RNA can function as an enzyme, and catalyze electron transfer, in the absence of oxygen by utilizing iron instead of Magnesium. And we know that oxygen was scarce while iron was abundant on the primitive earth. This has strengthened the RNA world hypothesis which proposes that RNA preceded DNA and proteins.

All this coupled with the fact that it took an inconceivably long period of time for the first cells to appear, makes "Goddidit" unlikely to say the least.You're ignoring the most likely explanation of the evidence and seeking a much more improbable one.

There's absolutely no proof whatsoever for the existence of any God, any supernatural being, let alone one that waited for a billion years to create the first life on earth and use naturally occurring molecules instead of a sophisticated artificial code for genetic information.

Unless you can show that Goddidit, the most plausible explanation of the evidence will remain natural science.

@andyboerger The universe, life, and consciousness are so complex that they can only be conceived as having come about through some form of awareness

Hey, Andy... does God have consciousness...? If so, then your suggestion that it's necessarily an attribution of a creator presents you with a bit of a problem in terms of an infinite regression.

Unless, of course, you'd like to suggest that, oh, say, his consciousness evolved naturally and gradually such that he didn't need a creator...

That said, this still leaves you with the issue of how this god came to exist without himself being the creation of another agency; a notion you've just ruled out a priori when considering the existence of the universe.

As I mentioned above,the standard theological response to this question is that God is maximally simple. IOW, "consciousness" by itself is so complex it requires a designer, but when that designer possesses consciousness, it is not complex, because otherwise the designer would have to be complex, and it can't be complex, because then it would need a designer, and it doesn't need a designer because then... I don't know, I guess because if it needed a designer then the argument wouldn't work.

Really, this is "serious theology", not some Abbott and Costello routine, much as it sounds like the latter. I think it's based on something Thomas Aquinas wrote about 700 years ago....

Yeah, they can put all kinds of lace on it, but it's still a bowling ball. And when you shave all the lace off, the bowling ball is called "special pleading". You know, "nothing could possibly be X, except Y, because I need Y as my explanation for X..." In their case it's based on two unfounded but merely asserted presumptions: that that universe (and, more to the point, the humans in it) could not simply exist without the necessity of an agency; and that therefore, that agency exists, and it wants Jews to circumcise their sons, hates gays, and puts on a meat suit to walk on water and then change it into wine. The flaws are obvious if you just hold it up to the light and really look at it instead of just admiring it safely locked in the display case of sanctification.

That's not what the majority of theists believe. Their God is personal who sees and influences the daily proceedings on earth and in the universe. He's very much conscious and aware of everything. He actively created the intricate complexities of living systems.

History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion -- i.e., none to speak of.

"God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends." This may not be true, but it sounds good -- and is no sillier than any other theology.

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent -- it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.

That's not what the majority of theists believe. Their God is personal who sees and influences the daily proceedings on earth and in the universe. He's very much conscious and aware of everything. He actively created the intricate complexities of living systems.

The IDiots often claim: life is the product of a "mind".

Very true. However, if you ask them if God is also subject to time i.e. if he changes or gets older, they will almost always say "No." And if you ask them if God learns things that he did not know before (already incoherent for a "timeless" being), they will most likely also say "No."

So a being that is beyond time, never changes and never learns new things but which can be described as "thinking" or possessing of a "mind" seems logically impossible. That most theists nonetheless believe God can think simply indicates that they haven't thought the concept thru.

Laurence A. Moran

Larry Moran is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. You can contact him by looking up his email address on the University of Toronto website.

Sandwalk

The Sandwalk is the path behind the home of Charles Darwin where he used to walk every day, thinking about science. You can see the path in the woods in the upper left-hand corner of this image.

Disclaimer

Some readers of this blog may be under the impression that my personal opinions represent the official position of Canada, the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, the University of Toronto, the Faculty of Medicine, or the Department of Biochemistry. All of these institutions, plus every single one of my colleagues, students, friends, and relatives, want you to know that I do not speak for them. You should also know that they don't speak for me.

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Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake.
Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.
Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.
Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.
Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.